


across the sea

by roguewrath (purqatory)



Series: cliff's edge [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M, One Shot, One Shot Collection, basically an Anastasia au, prince!Cassian, smuggler!Jyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 21:30:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11193831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purqatory/pseuds/roguewrath
Summary: I still taste your kissesyour voice sings in my ear





	across the sea

He is busy _loathing_  Krennic that even as Cassian manages to press the side of his face against the piece of concrete, the next shot still catches the cartilage of his right ear and he hears the bone break. 

"Cassian!" and that shout saves his life. Recklessly, he searches the source of her voice, and sees her diving towards him, and the slick twist in the arch of her wrist with his trusted pistol towards Krennic. It lands in his left shoulder and Krennic's cry buys her enough time to go on all fours, crawls to the edge of the broken bridge and grasps Cassian's arms. 

Cassian allows his shock to distract him, his fingers finding purchase in his coat on her. The fur lining on the cap is damp from the rain, but the rest smells of Jyn, and he inhales briefly and feels the puff of her scent ricochet deep in his lungs.  

"Remind me to thank you later." he huffs, so close to Jyn that her green eyes flutters close for one brief second and leans forward to brush her forehead against his: "If you live through this." she murmurs, and then their time is up - a joint in her arm cracks but Cassian is hauled up by Jyn back over the ledge, and he crumbles into her waist. His fingers, scraped raw, touches her exposed skin and comes out too warm. 

" _Get to cover!_ " Jyn is yelling into his good ear, pulls on his shoulder to straighten him from his crouch, and pushes him on the back forward to the pillar on the side of the bridge. 

" _Bodhi! Now!_ " 

Something manages to stupidly ignite within their proximity; he is not the only one who shouts as a flash of light so strong it must have burned his eyes to the back of his head blasts him backwards, and his back reaches the side of the bridge first, and he crumbles; he can't draw breath- his lungs must have left him, too. 

The familiar ringing, the tearing through his temples, and hands on his cheeks catches him before he drifts. 

"You're leaving _with_ me, Jyn." Cassian tries to blink the blood - _whose blood is it?_ \- from his eyes, and only her trembling hands, brushing his fringe away, seems to help, but he thinks his mind is playing tricks on him because her face is drifting further away.

His head isn't making sense of it when he hears her murmur, "I'm not meant to." - she makes it sound like a goodbye, but her lingering hold on his hand, gone only abruptly as her friend yanks on his waist, and his eyes tries to track her, but he only manages to see her clutch at her stomach before he is jerked sideways and he goes down with it -

* * *

_The brown in her hair is almost molten copper in the setting sun, and he reaches for it before he can stop himself and before she notices, so he expects when his fingers cards through her loosen hair, she will push his arm away._

_He sucks in a breath when she doesn't: instead, she turns her face to him and shifts her body closer to his in the seat._

_"Did you ever imagine... being chased away from everything you know," her head sinks into his shoulder and as he stares down at her, his chin grazes her temple, "Everything that distinguishes you from everyone and everything else. That you somehow... manages to escape."_

_He stays still, to process his own words carefully: "_ At what cost _\- that is what I let myself think, first. Then the rest- they never gets_ thought _about."_

_She is just at the right height to nudge her cheek to his collarbone, "You're the most selfless person I've ever met." She swings her legs up over his lap, and he automatically adjusts her skirt and she gives him the twinkle of her laugh as her point made and proven. He returns her tease by rapping his knuckles over her kneecaps._

_She yelps, her fingers curling into his shirt; Jyn is a head shorter than him, and built lithe and small that as she scrunches her legs up in reflex, she is a ball, burrowing into him, her side pressed into him._ _He lets her, because he may never find the right words to beg her to._

_"I don't know who I was before all this." The waves crashing against the ship covers his confession, but he doesn't intend for anyone but the girl in his arms to hear. "Who I am now... perhaps my punishment may be lessened."_

_She looks at him, then, and Cassian wishes he is less impulsive around her: he can't understand what she is trying to say with her eyes. He is afraid she will confess to why she is risking her life sailing him across the oceans, that if everything that has happened_ hasn't,  _he might never know his existence's worth is to cross paths with her._

 _"Take it as whatever you want," she exhales, and it sounds like the beginning of a mockery, "You should never think of what you want to live with, or a life you get to have sole control, because then the universe will always find another direction to go. Trust in fate. This... this_ force _of nature. You can't fight something that's meant to be."_

_"Who are you," he pulls at a lock of her hair and lets the wind rearranges it back against her shoulder, "and what have you done to Jyn Hallik?"_

_Her throat works - in the way he knows it's her way of hiding more of her from him - "It _is what my mother used to say,"_  but she uses his shirt as leverage and turns to face him. "- _ _besides, I don't take my own advice, anyway."_

__"One's past is not enough to condemn him, then?"_ He lowers his eyes and says it as nonchalantly as possible. " _You should... because maybe I will."__

_She is shaking her head, her smile brims from the corners of her mouth, and he is close enough to hear her front teeth rake over her tongue._ _Her hair, the top of it wrapped in a loosening bun, the bottom half, unruly, thick and cascades down her shoulders, and smells of the ocean it makes him dizzy, makes him want to drift away wherever she will take him, makes him forget who he has to be, wants to be just_ Cassian _-_

_She is the one who leans in first: her kiss lands at the corner of his mouth, and she sucks in a breath that has her lower lip run along his scruff, then her fingers slides into the side of his face, and then she replaces her forefinger with her lips to meet his._

_He lets her do what she did not intend to perfect: steal the words from his mouth, steal his breath, steal his mind, take his soul-_

* * *

"Mon Mothma, there is news from General Gerrera. It's Jyn Erso."

Her cup against the crisp china saucer makes Cassian go rigid. He grips the fork tighter and the sensitive and raw skin over his knuckles pulls.

It still sounds so foreign to him, knowing _Jyn_ is related to one of the top scientists of his grandmother's cabinet; this concept that she and him have always existed in the same realm, their paths never crossed, yet intertwined. He has prioritized his time to think about the _what-if_ s, and that weight in his chest rattles out a bare breath.

His grandmother pursed her lips, but nevertheless, signals Captain Draven to move forward. 

"Miz Erso has been found. She is on her way here, accompanied by Lord Organa and company-"

As if his legs is carrying him across the deck - his tailbone is numb from sitting pin-straight, and it is difficult for him to push himself up on his bad leg- but he moves forward to catch the crashing sound of waves, to recover the path towards the greenland in his ocean.

**Author's Note:**

> can also take this as a rough draft of the work-in-progress Anastasia!au... ? ;)  
> come over on [tumblr](https://roguewrath.tumblr.com/) and let's talk about rebelcaptain aus !!!


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